Alicia Jackson formerly served as deputy director of the Biological Technologies Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The Department of Health and Human Services on Monday officially announced Alicia Jackson as the new director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, even as ARPA-H is beset by budget cuts.
Jackson, who most recently founded the women’s health startup Evernow, formerly served as deputy director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Biological Technologies Office. Her work there involved directing the agency’s investments across various biodefense projects as well as its biomanufacturing and drug development contracts, according to the HHS’ news release.
Jackson will bring that experience over to ARPA-H, which describes itself on its website as a funding agency dedicated to supporting research on “transformative biomedical and health breakthroughs – ranging from the molecular to the societal.”
Recently, for instance, the agency earmarked up to $100 million for quantitative measures of mental and behavioral health, seeking to generate “more robust data” regarding clinical outcomes and patients’ response to treatment. In a prepared statement on Monday, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. called Jackson “a visionary” who will work to “accelerate the biotechnology breakthroughs we need to tackle our most complex health challenges.”
While advocates had pushed for the creation of a DARPA-like agency during the first Trump administration to accelerate certain transformative health research, ARPA-H was not born until March 2022 under then-President Joe Biden, with $1 billion in initial funds from Congress to help power its first three years of operation. Last year, the agency received $1.5 billion in funds. But recent health cuts have eaten into the agency’s budget and projects. In August, for instance, the government pulled the plug on several ARPA-H programs, affecting projects that were meant to prevent cyberattacks on hospitals and use AI for medical imaging.
These cuts, reported by Politico based on information from eight anonymous sources, added up to around $150 million in canned research funding.
“ARPA-H is constantly evaluating its programs and projects to ensure they are aligned with Administration priorities and the agency’s role within the broader research & development funding ecosystem,” an HHS spokesperson said at the time.
Then, in September, the House Appropriations Subcommittee proposed to lower ARPA-H’s budget for the 2026 fiscal year to $945 million—a decline of $555 million from the previous fiscal year. A final 2026 budget has yet to be passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law.
